Happy Birthday from the Hospital

Generally on holidays I like to sleep in, but some strong and frequent contractions early this morning sent us to the hospital, where we were told that I was dialated to a 5, the doctor was on his way, and we were going to have a set of babies two days before my scheduled C-section.

Jeff kept cracking jokes, trying to distract me from the contractions. It didn't work.

Being told that I will soon no longer be pregnant, and I get a spinal block in the meantime? That worked.

The angle makes this look even bigger than it was, but still...look at that huge belly! It's like Sputnik! It's like an orange on a toothpick!

I like this angle much better. Baby A is the one with the hat, by the way. She weighed in at 5.10, while B was 5.9. Not too bad, girlies!

Daddy's pretty happy. 

I was a little groggy from surgery and pain killers, but I'm pretty happy too.

Paige isn't quite sure what to think. She was excited, and cooed at the cute babies, but was quickly more interested in exploring the hospital room than her new sisters.

As far as names go, we're still not quite sure, though we've been calling Baby B--who's been flipping every week, and actually changed from vertex to transverse while they were monitoring her this morning--Boo, short for Busig, the Swedish word for rascal.
Overall, everything's going well! My only complaint is that I'm drowsy from the pain killers. I can handle drowsy though. Babies are healthy, I'm feeling good, and I'm no longer pregnant! Happy Memorial Day!

Birds, Bees, and Bellies

We've started seeing some really pretty birds from our balcony. There's a pair of cardinals living in the tree across from our apartment, and a couple days ago we saw a really pretty yellow oriole.

For some reason, this little bird has adopted our apartment. I think that he must have seen a stinkbug or something  in our blinds one day, because he walked back and forth along our door, peering in, and occasionally trying to fly into our living room. After a while, he started coming to our kitchen window too, peeking and trying to fly in, usually when we were eating. I'm pretty sure whatever bug he was first interested in is now long gone, but he still comes a couple times a day to check in on us. We call him Humphrey.

In other news, our cherry tomato is doing super super well. We weren't expecting it to grow quite so fast, so we're suddenly in desperate need of a tomato cage. Paige is really excited about the plant. She pokes at the dirt and asks how plants eat, and when the tomatoes will come. She also does her best to attract bees by putting on her tutu, dancing around, and singing, "Come on, bees! Come eat the tomato flowers! They're yummy!" She gets a little nervous and runs inside when the bees actually show up though.

That's pretty much it around here. Oh, and I have a giant belly. I'm two days shy of 36 weeks now. Doc says I'm measuring 43 weeks gestation. That's apparently on the smaller side of twin bellies, since he says he's seen women measure 53 weeks. But at least I'm not one of those crazy pregnant ladies.  Jeff took Paige to go to the bathroom at the doctor's office and someone had left a urine sample in there.  Paige came out asking if she could have some of the apple juice. We told her maybe later.